The bear in the forest hut

"

The old man scratched his head, and replied:

"She has met with a great misfortune; this is all I have found of her—a few bare bones, and blood-stained garments; in the wood, in the old hut ... she has been devoured by wolves."

The old woman, wild with grief and despair, gathered up her daughter's bones, went to some neighbouring cross-ways, and when a number of people had gathered together, she buried them there with weeping and lamentation; then she fell face downward on the grave—and was turned to stone.

Meanwhile a royal carriage drew up in the courtyard of the old man's cottage, bright as the sun, with four splendid horses, and the coachman cracked his whip—till the cottage fell to pieces with the sound.

The king took both the old man and his daughter into the carriage, and they drove away to his capital, where the marriage soon took place.

The old man lived happily in his declining years, as the father-in-law of a king, and with his sweet daughter, who had once been so miserable, a queen.